Emigré New York

"One of modern European history's great stories. Jeffrey Mehlman tells the tale appealingly and persuasively... The individual stories—not least the symbolism of the ocean liner Normandie's tragic burning and capsizing at its Pier 48 berth—would be plenty to go on with, but Mr. Mehlman's theme is a larger one. He finds the French intellectuals in World War II New York not very different from the French aristocrats who found refuge in Kolblenz in the last decade of the 18th century, hoping for a reversal of the Revolution and restoration of the ancien regime."

"Subtle, erudite, and often humorous. Previous attempts by literature professors to tackle culture have not always resulted in works as mind-stretching and entertaining as this account."

"A series of elegant essays of cultural criticism."

"Jeffrey Mehlman has written an intriguing, highly original work... [He] has succeeded in achieving a personal, yet erudite, series of insights about intellectual production of French writers and philosophers exiled in New York during the Second World War... Mehlman deftly and sometime humorously brings to life this motley cast of characters."

"Mehlman's insightful book on French exiles in wartime New York City enriches the understanding of how very diverse political exiles reacted to the traumatic suffering of their homelands and other countries occupied by the Nazis."

"Mehlman's greatest achievement... is neither the history he's opened up nor the reputations he's reclaimed. It is the quality of the close reading that is most admirable, tracing words and themes as they echo and resonate from one text to another."

"Mehlman has written a brilliant, original, and challenging work. There is quite simply no other work like it, because Mehlman works on two levels at once, historical and metaphysical. It should find an eager audience among scholars working in the fields of twentieth-century French literature, the history of French thought, and the history of France in World War II."